HYDERABAD: Remembering Gandhi, Goethe Zentrum’s three-day event shed light on several aspects of Gandhi’s life and death. Pictures from Aditya Arya’s collection of photographs taken by journalist Kulwant Roy, who followed Gandhi like a shadow and captured some of the most precious moments, were put on display and distributed to attendants in the form of postcards. The event was inaugurated by Georg Enzweiler, Deputy Head of Mission, German Embassy and photographer Aditya Arya.
The following day was dedicated to panel discussions, with some esteemed academics participating as speakers. The themes chosen for discussion were unique and relevant to the present times. The first discussion was centred upon ‘Gandhi and modern environmentalism.’ The speakers, namely Nishikant Kolge, Vijaya Ramadas Mandala, Lavanya Suresh and Shiv Visvanathan presented their views on how Gandhi’s life and ideas inspire present-day environment movements and what learnings can be taken from Gandhian principles to build a framework for preventing the environment. Usha Raman moderated this discussion.
Beginning the discussion, she pointed out that themes of environment and climate change have personal dimensions such as our choices of recycling and using eco-friendly transport as well as public and political dimensions where conversations about environmentalism and how the world is becoming increasingly uninhabitable for many forms of life spring up. Also, these dimensions direct us to look for ways in which a framework for environmental protection and conservation can be built.
“For environmentalists in India, Gandhi has offered a convenient and politically powerful starting point for building that framework,” she said. “Ramchandra Guha, among others, has described Gandhi as India’s pre-eminent environmentalist. Guha has phrased that as a question rather than a statement. Whether one speaks of the Chipko movement or the Narmada Bachao Andolan, Gandhi is invoked as the inspiration for the form these movements took, their non-violent resistance to ecological destruction,” she added.
Resonating with Raman, Nishikant Kolge, Associate Professor at CSDS, New Delhi and author of Gandhi Against Caste, said, “I believe it is very risky to say that Gandhi was an early environmentalist. However, his writings, thoughts and actions can give us some ideas. Today’s environmental movements can learn or take inspiration from Gandhi.” He said that Gandhi’s critique of modern industrial society, ideas about decentralised villages and his radical non-violence have guided environmentalists in the past and can inspire further movements. “I argued in my book also that Gandhi’s action was more important than his writing. His lifestyle was eco-friendly, he gave an idea of an ecological being.
Even human waste was recycled in Gandhi’s ashram and he was very conscious about all these things. His life, into toto, was about minimising one’s own needs,” he added. He also pointed out that as opposed to the judeo-Christian idea of man being the centre of everything, Gandhi’s ideas seem to be similar to those taught by Mahayana Buddhism, especially about the self-realisation of man. “He (Gandhi) says, I believe if one man gets spiritually elevated, the whole world gets elevated with him; if one man falls morally, the whole world falls up to that extent. This is his radical reconstruction of the idea of self and self-realisation, which can also help us to rethink environment philosophy,” Kolge said.
Lavanya Suresh, from BITS Pilani Hyderabad, discussed ‘climate coloniality,’ emphasising that the impact of increased global temperature would be unprecedented on vulnerable countries like India. She highlighted how environmentalism becomes political in this context and pointed out the limitations of climate models that consider emissions within territorial boundaries. Many high-income countries export production and consumption, impacting emissions.
Suresh added that, despite lower consumption-based emissions in emerging economies, the burden of environmental responsibility falls unfairly on non-industrialised nations. She also brought to notice that historical emissions by the USA and EU and the UNFCCC’s equity principle get sidelined when these negotiations take place among top leaders.
Vijaya Mandala introduced the audience to the concept of deep ecology as developed by Norwegian philosopher Arne Dekke Eide Næss, who was influenced by Gandhi. Shiv Visvanathan pointed out that Gandhi had strange quirks and to begin with, a great sense of humour. It would be wrong to assume that Gandhi was something of a luddite. “The designer for his charka, Maurice Frydman, had a thousand patents. I discovered something even more fascinating. You know the loudspeaker was introduced for the first time in a Gandhian rally in India. Strange guy,” Visvanathan said. “What I find fascinating about Gandhi was that he developed a heuristic (for understanding the question of environment.) He did not write about nature. The best way to think about nature is to think about the human body. The body as a microcosm. When you refer to nature, the body becomes a model for a certain kind of thought. Secondly, he wrote brilliantly about dirt and junk. Through that, he, in a way, understood technology and how humans perceive difference,” he said.
Visvanathan also shared some of the insights he took from his professor Ramachandra Gandhi, (Gandhi’s grandson.) “Take the words Swadeshi and Swaraj. He (Ramachandra Gandhi) said these were the most poetic words Gandhi created. Swadeshi is linguistic. Don’t look at it as practical. It’s the locality. It’s the gossip. It’s the neighbourhood. It’s the guy next door. Swaraj explodes into the world. Encompassing dreams you haven’t yet dreamt of. So Swaraj is futuristic. Swadeshi is cultural. What makes him exciting to me is not that Gandhi was anti-technology, but that Gandhi was a futurist who dreamt of different dreams.”
The following discussion was on ‘Gandhi and Democratic Disagreement.’ The participants were Bhangya Bhukya, Mridula Mukherjee and Gita Ramaswamy. Mohun Guruswamy moderated the discussion.
Mridula Mukherjee pointed out how the disagreement among leaders was given an open floor for discussion and despite having separate paths, both Gandhi and Ambedkar worked immensely towards their respective goals, i.e. freedom from colonial rulers and caste oppression.
The final day was designated for movie screenings, where some hand-picked gems were played for audiences, including Shyam Benegal’s The Making of the Mahatma.